The entry begins:This brings up the interesting question of what my protagonist Vee Crawford-Wong (who is half-Chinese, half-Caucasian) actually looks like. I’ve hinted that he feels more Asian than he looks; his best friend Madison calls him “confused-looking” and “cute in a kind of old-fashioned way.” He’s also sort of big and soft, and very self-critical – and since the story’s told from his perspective, our view of him is really shaped by this. A friend of mine, who’s a fantastic painter, is working on a self-portrait of Vee; he ultimately told me he’s doing something a bit Cubist – drawing all the physical descriptions that Vee mentions and criticizes, and putting them together in an exaggerated mish-mash. I thought this was a great choice, since Vee’s self-consciousness about how he looks is intrinsic to his questions about his ethnicity and identity.Learn more about the book and author at L. Tam Holland's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.
None of this, of course, is helpful for movie-making. To some degree, I think my book would make a good cartoon/graphic novel. But I also think, in realistic movie form, the father-son relationship and the vitality of China could come through in moving ways. I don’t think it’s a cop-out answer to say the best person to play Vee might be an unknown. If you look around at Asian-American actors, they are still so typecast as action heroes (a la Jackie Chan) or sidekicks (a la John Cho). My closest bet would be someone like Ezra...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong.
My Book, The Movie: The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong.
--Marshal Zeringue
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